


Living nightmares

by Jinxgirl



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:07:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23235196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinxgirl/pseuds/Jinxgirl
Summary: Jessica ended Kilgrave that day on the dock; there is no question that he is dead. Then how is it that she wakes up every night now, in the middle of carrying out commands he gives her in her dreams?
Comments: 9
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

“Do you know what really drew me to you? What it was about you that called to me, as soon as I saw you for the first time?”

Jessica Jones’s nails cut into the palms of her skin from her balled fists, and every muscle of her body held taut with her apprehensive fury. She kept her eyes on the slender man across from her, loathing every detail of his purple-clad figure, every cell of his body down to every particle of his DNA. She was antisocial by nature, but only Kevin Kilgrave had ever inspired such levels of hatred from her- equal also to her level of fear of him.

“Probably your penis,” she said caustically. “It seemed to lead the way every time you raped me.”

“Oh, always back to that, you just can’t ever let that go,” Kilgrave scoffed, waving a dismissive hand, as though she had brought up a small, petty matter of disagreement rather than repeated violations that still left her unable to sleep without nightmares or get through a day without panic attacks and excessive drinking, over a year later. “I seem to remember you enjoying yourself very much, at the time, and I also seem to remember that I put plenty of effort into pleasuring you, penis-free, quite often, not that you have much gratitude for it now.”

“Don’t make me vomit- or rip your tongue out,” Jessica bristled, unable to suppress the shudder that came over her at the unwanted flicker of memory or the bile that burned the back of her throat. “Why can’t you ever just shut the fuck up? You say you’re so into me, seems to me what you’re really so in love with is the sound of your own damn voice.”

“I do have a soothing cadence to my words when I put a mind to it,” Kilgrave said breezily, seemingly unoffended. “And a decent singing voice, as you well know. Better than yours, but you have your charms all the same.”

Jessica suspected sometimes that half his enjoyment of his pursuit of her was the verbal and mental sparring she forced him to engage in. Her resistance to him, something he was so very unaccustomed to in any other, must be both maddening and exhilarating to him, like a puzzle he was not quite able to solve. 

She turned her face away from him, a muscle flexing in her jaw, but her lack of response did not discourage Kilgrave from continuing. Instead he stepped closer.

“I was drawn to you, Jessica, because I could see that you were like me.”

“The fuck I am!” Jessica sputtered, her head whipping around with such force that strands of her hair slapped her own pale cheeks as she directed a glare any sensible being would have withered under in Kilgrave’s direction. “You’re not just a raping, kidnapping, murdering sadist-“

“Ah, ah, I never murdered anyone, Jessica, please be accurate- I’ll have you recall that the only one of us to ever lay an assaulting hand on someone was you,” Kilgrave interrupted calmly, but Jessica was seeing red and barreled over his interruption with her continued onslaught of furious words.

“-Sadistic psychopathic bastard, you’re delusional too! Under what warped mindset do you figure being so-called fucking “lucky” enough to also happen to have have supernatural abilities makes me anywhere near being like you?!”

“I’m not referring to your strength, Jessica, or your endurance, or even that falling trick of yours,” Kilgrave clarified calmly, shrugging his shoulders. “Of course those are part of your appeal, it isn’t exactly common to meet people with our abilities, and certainly not ones with your beauty. But even if those things caught my attention, they aren’t what held it.”

He paused, making certain Jessica was listening, that her eyes were on his, before continuing. 

“What mattered to me, Jessica, is that I could see you were like me in who you are. You might deny it, but a part of you knows you could be me, with a few changes of detail. You are like me- you just won’t let yourself give in to it.”

“I could never be like you, Kevin,” Jessica spat out, her jaw twinging with pain at how hard she was clinching her teeth. “I never will be. You saw what you wanted to see.”

“Oh, aren’t you, though?” Kilgrave challenged, eyebrows lifting. “You try so hard to play the hero, Jessica, as much as you deny it, but somehow, it always fails. Your helpless victims lose their lives or livelihood, their sanity or self-respect. You never really help anyone, not how it matters, and you never really make a difference or change. The only thing you’ve been able to do with any level of permanence is kill people.”

She started towards him, her blood heated with aggressive intention, but her body refused to respond to her brain’s commands, keeping her motionless, arms still taut at her sides. Jessica fought with her own limbs, attempting to force herself to walk, to hit out, but they refused to respond to her, refused to acknowledge her attempts of control. Stunned, panic rising up her chest, she tried to speak, but her voice too seemed beyond her ability to utilize. 

This shouldn’t be happening- she had been immune to Kilgrave’s power, he could not force his will on her. He hadn’t even commanded her- at least, she hadn’t heard it, or couldn’t remember hearing it. How was this possible, how had this happened?

Even as she struggled, Kilgrave was smiling, self-satisfied as always, nodding as though she were somehow giving evidence to his claims.

“Well, isn’t this fun?” he remarked. “I have you where I want you- polite, present, and entirely focused on me. You know, Jessica, you could see for yourself what it’s like to have this power, how easy and enjoyable it really is to have someone so fully under your control.” He paused, dramatic and deliberate, before saying in mock surprise, “Oh, right, you do know, don’t you? You do the very same thing, don’t you? You draw control with your fists and your threats, I draw control with words and mental overtaking- it all comes to the same end, it’s bending another person’s actions to your will for them, however you go about it. We both get what we want, and we both get a thrill from it, whether you admit it or not. We both know, every time, that it’s only proving that we are stronger and smarter and better than others.”

He leaned in closer still, his breath stirring the skin of Jessica’s cheek.

“And yet you tell yourself, Jessica, that you are not like me?”

He was speaking out Jessica’s darkest, most deeply buried fear, putting words to what she could rarely let herself even acknowledge in thought. She had spat out in defiance to Kilgrave on multiple occasions how very different she was from him, how she abhorred his way of engaging in the world- how she hated him. 

And yet Jessica hated herself too, more often than not. How could she deny that her presence in the world had probably made things worse for more people than it made better? How could she deny that her actions had ruined so many people’s worlds?

She didn’t want to be like Kilgrave. But desire didn’t necessarily equal reality, and this was what Jessica dreaded to be true.

She could feel tears scald the backs of her eyes and fought not to let them free, not to allow Kilgrave to see the depth of fear and emotion in their surface. She could tell from his smug smile that she was not successful. 

Kilgrave’s finger reached out, lightly tracing the curve of Jessica’s cheek. She wanted to bite the offending appendage off of his hand, but could only manage to blink.

“You could try it out, you know. Being like me, putting me on like an expensive suit and strolling around in my ways, just to see how it makes you feel. Come on, Jessica- what could it hurt?”

It would hurt whoever was unfortunate enough to cross her path, of course, nearly as much as it would hurt Jessica herself to do it. But Kilgrave never had possessed even a modicum of empathy.

“Go on, Jessica, try it out,” he insisted, laying his hand flat against her cheek, looking into her eyes and speaking with the gentle croon of an affectionate lover- as he no doubt perceived himself to be. “Go out on the street, take some useless bloke by the throat, knock him around like you would any other ponce who got in your way, and drag him off to some empty warehouse. Tie him up and torture him a bit, or get someone else to do it for you, whichever you prefer. Do it, Jessica, and then tell me- aren’t you getting off on it, just a little bit? Just like me?”

He twirled a strand of her hair around his finger, giving it a light tug, and then pressed a kiss against the lobe of her ear, letting his lips drag up its curve before whispering directly inside it.

“Do it, Jessica, and then try and tell me we aren’t one and the same.”

His sharp white teeth nipped at her ear’s shell, and finally Jessica managed to summon the strength to force air up and out from her lungs, releasing it in a sharp scream of protest. Her head spun, a strong jerking sensation tugging through her skin, and her vision dimmed, her thoughts blanking out along with it. 

88

Jessica’s body twitched, a muscle in her neck sending out a spasm of pain directly into her skull. Dark red spots pulsed in front of her closed eyes, and although she didn’t attempt to move immediately, she was aware of feeling nauseous, dizzy, and unsteady on her feet. She sensed rather than knew with certainty that she was standing; nevertheless, she kept her eyes closed for several more seconds, waiting until some of her initial vertigo began to fade in intensity. 

Before she opened her eyes, she could already tell that she was somewhere unfamiliar. She could smell a musty, stale odor in the air, mingled with gasoline, rust, and a smell similar to pennies. The latter made her suck in a sharp breath, swallowing in dread, for she recognized it as the smell of blood. 

She knew even without the assistance of vision that she was not in her apartment, nor Trish’s or anyone else’s she was familiar with. The ground beneath her feet was hard, likely concrete from the feel under her boots, and the air was cold and empty in a way that even older apartments didn’t feel. This was not a place that someone had been living, or at least not for longer than an night or two. And yet she was not outside, returning to consciousness after a night of binge drinking in an alley or on the streets. 

So where the hell was she?

Opening her eyes slowly, Jessica took in her surroundings, seeing that her assumptions had been correct. She was standing in what appeared to be some sort of warehouse or garage, one that was rarely utilized or accessed, from the filthy, rundown look of the place and its contents. It was not a place she remembered having been before, and she still could not place what sequence of events would have lead her there- or even how much time might have passed that she could not recall. Had she been unconscious? But then how had she been standing?

She felt the back of her head, then her forehead gingerly, finding no wound to indicate that she had injured, and noted that no other part of her body appeared to be either. So that meant she had either developed dementia at a very early age, or else she had experienced some sort of blackout, likely from drinking. 

Exhaling, Jessica turned around, scanning the building for its exit or for however it was that she had gained entrance. 

She almost missed seeing the other figure in the room, misinterpreting his outline to be mere shadow rather than an actual human being’s form. When he twitched, then lifted his head to look directly at her with bloodshot eyes, Jessica’s breath sputtered in her throat, and she barely managed to bite back a scream.

Someone else was in the building with her, someone that Jessica was sure she had never seen before. He was a man approximately of her own age, white, slim to the point of frail, with uncombed greasy hair and patches of stubble on his cheeks and chin. He stared at her, chest heaving without rhythm to his breaths, eyes wide with fear, but made no move either to attack her or flee. He couldn’t have. The man was chained against the wall, arms stretched out uncomfortably over his head so his muscles were pulled to strained limit to support him. His face was marred with cuts and bruises, and Jessica could see blood drying on his torn shirt. 

Heart galloping to erratic speed, Jessica’s head swiveled back and forth, eyes scanning the room’s interior for any other previously unseen inhabitants- especially those of the man’s tormentor. She hurried to check all areas that an assailant could potentially be hiding behind, ready to catch her by surprise in an attack. When no ill-intended would be assassin revealed himself, she whirled back to the man against the wall, hands up in unconscious fists still as she looked him over, assessing his injuries without touching him. He didn’t look as though he were about to drop dead any time soon, but he was definitely in need of medical assistance. 

The man appeared to be watching her warily, not bothering to speak, perhaps too much in shock to make the effort. Jessica’s thoughts tumbled over each other in her hurried effort to make sense of what was happening, of what insanity she had just found herself inside of. Had they both been kidnapped? Or had the man kidnapped her, drugged her or rendered her briefly unconscious, and she repaid him by chaining him against the wall when she came to? That could explain her disorientation. But who the hell was he, and what would he want with her? 

“What the fuck is going on?” she asked him, her words harsh and abrupt. “Where the hell are we?”

“Wh….what?” the man stammered, pupils dilating further. When she took a step towards him, he flinched visibly, turning his face away from her. “How the hell do I know that?”

“Who are you?” Jessica demanded, not backing off, despite registering his fear of her. “Why are we here?”

“Why are we here?!” the man repeated her question with disbelief, staring at Jessica as though he found the question to be somehow unreasonable. “Lady, again, I don’t have a clue!”

As Jessica lifted her hands up in a frustrated gesture, the man cried out, shutting his eyes and twisting his head and body as much as he were capable in an effort to shield himself from an anticipated blow. Seeing his genuine terror, Jessica made herself take in a breath and release it, attempting to force her body to ease the tension if emanated, even as her muscles remained tight with her strain. 

“Okay, okay, let’s back this up,” she muttered, as much to herself as to the man she was speaking to. “Try this one. Just tell me who the fuck you are, then, all right? What’s your name?”

“Nolan, Nolan Watts,” the man answered, seeming relieved to finally have an answer to give her. “Listen, I don’t know anything else, please, if you just let me go-“

“Are they still around here?” she interrupted him, not recognizing the name and so dismissing him as being anyone she could possibly have somehow involved in her life. 

When Nolan blinked, not seeming to understand, she clarified. 

“The person, or people, who did this to you. How long ago did they go? Could they still be nearby?”

Nolan’s mouth opened, but no words came out from it initially. His reply to Jessica was slow in coming, and very careful, as though not quite certain that he was speaking a language she understood.

“They- they didn’t go. They’re still here.”

Heart leaping to her throat, Jessica spun around, again searching the perimeter of the room with her eyes. She could not see even the smallest movement to indicate the presence of another person, but she couldn’t see the benefit Nolan would get from lying to her. 

“Where, Nolan? Are they outside?”

“What? What- no,” the man said incredulously, shaking his head. “What is this, some kind of game? A test? What is it you want me to say here?”

“The fucking truth would be helpful!” Jessica ground out, jerking her head back towards him to get a glimpse at his expression. “Who did this to you? Where did they go? Tell me, so I can protect us!”

“Are you serious- you want to protect me?” Nolan sputtered, his words punctuated with a faintly hysterical snicker. “You really are crazy, aren’t you? You’re literally fucking insane.”

“Nolan!” Jessica barked, and the man’s laugh halted. He looked at her with his mouth pressing into grim line, no humor left in his voice when he answered her previous question.

“Lady, you did this to me. You dragged me off the street, beat me up, and tied me to this wall. And before you ask me why, I don’t have an answer to that, because I’ve never seen you before in my life. You seriously don’t remember?”

Jessica felt nauseous, her leg muscles growing weak and shaky as the man’s words and his own conviction of their truth sank in. All she could think of in the next several moments was how very accurate the man’s scalding words to her must be- that she must at last have lost her mind.


	2. Chapter 2

Two weeks previously

Kilgrave was dead now. This time for real. 

Jessica knew that, of course. She had been the one to make it happen. She had felt the snap of his vertebrae against her hands, had watched the light in his eyes dim out into a blank mannequin’s stare as his body’s functioning stopped. She had read over the coroner’s report, had personally insured that his remains were cremated and buried not merely six but fifteen feet deep, just to insure they never managed to somehow make their way back up to the earth’s surface again. 

Most people seemed to feel that this should make Jessica feel satisfied, even proud. They called her a hero, as though she were somehow better than others, more than human. Technically speaking, she was more than human, if only by virtue of the fluke of being strong enough to kill a man with a touch, and lucky enough to have become immune to Kilgrave’s command. 

But Jessica Jones, a hero? Jessica Jones, better than others? 

People were deluded. People simply couldn’t see the truth of the shitshow, the walking infection inside that she really was.

Anyone would have ended Kilgrave, if they could have, she had told Trish and Malcolm, and anyone else who even vaguely implied something positive about what she had done. It doesn’t mean anything that it was me. It isn’t worth talking about, so shut up about it. Shut up, period. 

Of course, Trish hadn’t listened. Trish being Trish, she wanted to bubble over with pride of her, to emphasize to Jessica how very heroic and brave and strong she believed her to be, whether Jessica wanted to hear it or not.

“But it wasn’t just anyone, Jessica, it was you. You, and that does mean something, it does matter. It does make you a hero. Just think, Kilgrave can never hurt anyone ever again. People are free of him. You’re free of him, Jessica.”

She said that, but as earnest and well-meaning as Trish was, it wasn’t true. Jessica wasn’t free of Kilgrave, not in the ways that counted. She could still see him at the edges of every crowd, lingering in any shadows nearby, a starring presence in all her dreams. He still hurt her every bit as deeply in her memories, in her thoughts, in every time she saw someone wearing purple or speaking in a British accent. She still felt the pain he had forced on her every time she flinched or lashed out against an unexpected touch, every time she forced her emotions into numbness with another day of drinking. 

And he was still hurting others too. Jessica knew it was true, no matter what Trish said, because how could he not be? She knew it, each time she remembered the pure disgust and hatred in Luke’s eyes when he looked at her and knew the same hands he had held in his had been used to murder his wife. She knew it when she remembered the devastated grief in Robyn’s eyes and the shame and anguish of withdrawal in Malcolm’s. She knew it when she remembered Trish, agonizing in futile efforts of suicide, eyes glittering in fear or forced passion. And she knew it when she looked at each of them now, seeing his memory active and alive in their memory and instinctive responses. 

He was still hurting people every day. And although his body may be dead, he was still alive in each of their memories. Worse, he was still alive in Jessica, in the things she had done and person she had been forced to become. 

88

Jessica had wanted Kilgrave dead. 

Anyone who realized who he was, who wasn’t currently under his spell, would want that. He was a monster, a force of unbridled power that was almost always harnessed strictly for his own amusement, usually in the direction of someone else’s destruction or abuse. Any person with any sort of human empathy, or even one solely interested in maintaining their own personal control of their choices and their life, would want a person like that to be taken permanently out of the picture.

Jessica wanted Kilgrave dead, but she hadn’t wanted to be a killer herself. Not again. Not even towards him. And she hadn’t thought far ahead enough to realize that once Kilgrave’s death was a fact rather than a goal, she herself would have no real purpose left in her own life.

It wasn’t that she was suicidal, exactly. Jessica knew the difference. How could she avoid wanting the release of death, when she had been his puppet, his favorite toy, for so long? How could she not long for death, for anything that would release her from the torment of eight long months in Kilgrave’s captivity? 

Eight months of smiling, each time he commanded. Eight months of dressing herself in Kilgrave’s purple dresses, eating his favorite foods and showing delight at each unwanted gesture he lavished on her, touching him and being touched by him as though she desired nothing more. Eight months of screaming and raging and weeping deep down inside, even as she smiled and giggled and caressed on the outside. 

Of course, she had wanted then to die. It seemed the only way to bring her suffering to an end. She had gone so far as to stand on the edge of the building twenty stories up, gathering the energy to jump without making any attempt to control the fall. Even after Kilgrave, as she still reeled from panic at each small flicker of memory triggered each day by ordinary people or things, Jessica drowned herself in alcohol and threw herself into dangerous situations without regard for the danger and damage it might bring her. Even when she was no longer actively suicidal, Jessica had become accustomed to a passive lack of caring about herself or her life. 

Kilgrave’s return had changed that, had sharpened her focus and spiked her adrenaline so Jessica felt more alive than she had in years, even as she felt herself and her friends to be greatly endangered by his presence. As much as she hated him and everything he did to ruin people’s lives, she couldn’t deny that fighting against his, dedicating herself to stopping him, gave her a purpose for each day, even each hour. Kilgrave gave Jessica a reason to keep going, to fight through one more day to right his wrongs and stop him from hurting anyone as badly as he had hurt others. 

As badly as he had hurt her. 

But now that she had succeeded, she felt no sense of victory, no pride or even relief. All Jessica felt was an empty disconnectedness, a feeling of having nowhere left to turn. 

She hadn’t quite let herself understand that although killing Kilgrave was saving others, it was still destroying a life. She hadn’t let herself realize that just because he was gone, nothing about who she was now, who he had made her become and the things he had made her do would change.

She had still killed Reva Cage. She had still been unsuccessful in keeping hundreds of innocent people from being hurt, simply by being unfortunate enough to be somehow connected to Jessica. And now, no matter how much it was needed, she had still killed another human being. Her hand was forever stained with another person’s blood. 

Jessica hadn’t realized that when she killed Kilgrave, she had also done away with the last tiny piece of herself that still clung to the idea that she could do more good than bad in the world. Now Jessica was sure of it- all she was good for now was destruction.

88

The first few days after Kilgrave’s second and final death, after she had been released of all charges and declared free to go, Jessica did absolutely nothing but go home and throw herself, still fully clothed, into bed.

For several more days, her life became a slog of minimal activity as she let her exhausted body catch up with all the stress, exertion, and severe sleep deprivation she had endured over the past several weeks. She slept, waking up only to drink what was left in the apartment, pee, and climb back in bed. She turned off her cell and let all calls coming to the office number go to voicemail; even the thought of actually speaking to someone was enough to give her a migraine that made opening her eyes seem akin to lighting her hair on fire.

She wasn’t completely alone during this, as little as she might have acknowledged the fact. Malcolm and Trish both had keys to her place, and she occasionally heard the low murmur of Malcolm’s voice as he answered calls and the clatter of laptop keys as he made notes or put in appointments, hopefully for dates far into the future. She was dimly aware of Trish sitting on the edge of the bed and smoothing her hair a few times, and she was pretty sure she didn’t imagine her kissing her forehead like she was some kind of invalid child on one occasion. Each time she woke up there was a class of water and some sort of pill that Jessica assumed to be Tylenol on her nightstand, and twice there was a plate with a cluster of grapes and a turkey and tomato sandwich that had definitely not originated from her own kitchen.

She had mostly ignored the food, unable to manage more than a couple of bites, but sipped the water with the pills before heading straight for her booze supply. On the second day Jessica was coherent enough to vaguely note her the apartment looked cleaner; her bet was that it was Malcolm rather than Trish who had straightened things up. Trish might bitch about her sloppiness and hygiene, but she was one to talk, since the woman paid for someone to clean her own apartment.

She didn’t speak to or acknowledge Malcolm or Trish, the few times she was awake enough in those first few days to know they were nearby. She would have spoken to Luke, but unsurprisingly, he didn’t turn up.

She hadn’t expected him to talk to want to talk to her again, let alone see her. Although Jessica knew she deserved Luke’s silence, deserved far more than that from him, it didn’t make it any less painful to experience. She had hurt him deeply, betrayed him in her own choice of keeping silent on how large a role she played in his grief, and her involvement with him had caused Kilgrave to target him. Because of Jessica, he had lost his wife, his bar, and had nearly killed someone. Because of Jessica, he had ended up with complications because of being shot in the head against skin that would not give way to the bullet.

No, she couldn’t fault Luke for not checking in with her after everything. But this didn’t stop her from longing for him to show this degree of combined grace and masochism, for one last effort at redemption in his eyes. She couldn’t help but ache for the chance to see him look at her once more with respect and admiration overshadowing even his desire for her in his eyes. She couldn’t help but feel her skin prickle with the memory of how he had touched her like she was someone worth being gentle with, even the roughness of their sexual actions and witnessing the enormity of her physical strength. 

She wanted back the feeling she had around Luke, of being acknowledged for her strength even as she was made to feel safe and small and held. She wanted what she had dared to hope to have with him, even as she knew damn well it was far beyond her abilities to hold onto, and even further beyond what she deserved.

But Jessica had lost so much now that it seemed far easier to deaden herself against any sort of wanting. Life would be easier, if not better, if she could simply forget any sort of feelings or ambitions at all.

That was what alcohol was supposed to do for her. But somehow, even that wasn’t as steady a protective source as it should be.

Fuck.

88

“All right, Jess. No one’s asking you to shine, but it’s about time you rise.”

Jessica’s face scrunched up as though in effort to avoid strong rays of sunlight, although her bedroom remained dark, and her face was pressed firmly against her pillow, blocking out whatever small slits of light might come in through her blinds. She didn’t respond to the voice addressing her, in hopes that if she ignored it, it would shut up and go away.

No such luck. Trish Walker was nothing if not persistent. It was one of the most annoying traits she had inherited from her mother Dorothy.

“You’ve had three days to sleep and ignore the world. Time’s up.”

“Fuck off,” Jessica grunted, her voice muffled in the pillow, but Trish knew her well enough to have a good guess at her words, even if they weren’t intelligible. 

“Sorry, my sex life can wait until my sister’s life-life resumes,” she said briskly. “Up, Jessica. You’ve had your time and space.”

“And I want more,” Jessica mumbled, burrowing further under the blankets. 

She was rudely ripped out of his comforting cocoon when Trish snatched her blanket off her, leaving Jessica exposed to the other woman’s eyes and somewhat cold in her sweaty t-shirt and underwear. When Jessica squawked in an affronted and rather undignified manner, slapping out blindly in what she assumed to be Trish’s direction, Trish continued to speak over her wordless protest.

“Malcolm says you’ve had dozens of calls. Calls from people you could help, Jessica. People who need you. People who see all the potential you have to offer to the world. I’m not saying you have to start in on that immediately, but you need to start functioning again. Even if it’s in zombie mode for a while. And that starts with getting your ass out of bed, taking a shower, and putting on real clothes.”

“I didn’t ask your opinion,” Jessica growled, turning her face against the pillow and squinting at Trish with some resentment. “I’m not telling you what to do, so stop shoving your bullshit theories on my life and what I should be doing with it at me.”

“Was that a “thanks for caring enough to look out for me, Trish, you are the best friend ever and I love you?” Trish rephrased in a wildly different interpretation of Jessica’s actual intended message, smirking. “Right, glad you agree. Love you too, Jess.”

She snatched the pillow out from under Jessica’s head- or rather, attempted to. Jessica’s hands latched on, forcefully enough that when Trish also pulled, the pillow ripped in half, sending feathers flying into the air. Trish snickered, shaking her head as Jessica pointed an accusing finger at her. 

“What the hell, what am I supposed to sleep on now?!”

“Please, I’ve seen you pass out on top of a bag of trash in an alley,” Trish reminded her, still smirking. “I’ll get you another damn pillow, but deal is you have to go to the store with me to pick it out.”

“No,” was Jessica’s decisive response as she rolled back onto her stomach and buried her face in folded arms. 

Trish sat beside her and began to tap her fingers in a light but rather annoying manner on her back, as though she were typing a letter onto Jessica’s skin. 

“Time to rejoin the world, Jess. Come on, I’ll provide sunglasses and sunscreen if you think the sun’s rays may send you into shock.”

“I prefer the vampire lifestyle,” Jessica retorted, still not lifting her head. “Especially the part about hanging out sleeping in coffins all day where you can be apart from the rest of the world. Time to rejoin the world…fuck, Trish, do you not see that I’m feeling pretty damn antisocial?”

“You’re always pretty damn antisocial,” Trish shot back, the tapping on her back slowing but not stopping. “Doesn’t mean you have to become a hermit or recluse.”

When Jessica didn’t answer her, Trish’s hands stilled, giving light pressure against Jessica’s back instead. Although Jessica didn’t acknowledge this, the touch was comforting, grounding in a way that Trish’s presence often could be for her. 

“Jess…you know I’m only making you do this because I care,” Trish said more quietly, and with enough sincerity that Jessica’s stomach squirmed. Earnest Trish was hard to say no to, almost as much as crying Trish. “If I thought it was helping you, I would let you stay holed up here for as long as you wanted or needed. But I don’t think it is helping you, Jess. I don’t think this is what you need anymore, and I don’t think it’s healthy.”

“Was something about my lifestyle healthy at any point?” Jessica pointed out, exhaling. “Sorry if I’m not the Herbal Essence, essential oils, yoga model health freak that you are, Trish. You are, so why don’t you go do your healthy you thing and leave me the hell alone?”

Trish went silent for a long several moments. Jessica could almost feel her gaze burning into the back of her head, and her skin began to prickle with discomfort. She was about to turn her head, to give in just enough to get to a sitting position on the bed, when Trish spoke, her voice small and hurting.

“You’re killing yourself like this, Jessica. Is that…is that really what you want? What you’re trying to do?”

It wasn’t, not exactly. But it wasn’t exactly Jessica’s number one aspiration to take care of herself either, or to make any effort of rebuilding her life into something with purpose again. 

She didn’t have the energy, let alone the words, to try to explain this to Trish; she wasn’t sure she completely understood the difference herself. So she stayed silent, even as she sensed Trish’s distress amplify with her lack of response.

“Jessica,” Trish repeated, softly at first, then more forcefully. “Jessica Jones, sit up, now. Sit up and look at me.”

It was the fear behind her words rather than their commanding tone that made Jessica obey. Slowly she rolled over and with muscles aching from limited use, pushed herself up so she was sitting and facing Trish. Trish reached out a manicured hand, cupping Jessica’s face in hers. Compared to the Jessica’s own callused palms, Trish’s skin felt cool to the touch and impossibly soft. She used her other hand to brush Jessica’s hair back from her face, leaning close until Jessica could not avoid looking her in the eye.

“You deserve to be here,” she said softly but fiercely. “I don’t care what anyone says about you or what your inner demons are telling you. You have only done what you had to do and what you felt was right. You never hurt anyone on purpose, and you’ve helped a hell of a lot of people. Saved them, Jessica. And if you’re judging yourself because of what Kilgrave did, or because of what you had to do to him-“ she shook her head, swallowing as her eyes clouded over, full of her own pained memories. “You did what no one else could, Jessica. You did what was right.”

Jessica’s throat pulsed, and she swallowed painfully, her eyes shutting against the other woman’s words. 

“Trish,” she whispered, her voice raw, raspy, but even though she didn’t open her eyes, she could feel the force with which Trish shook her head, refusing to allow her to continue.

“No, Jessica, you listen to me. Shut your mouth and open your ears and eyes. Look at me.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Jessica obeyed, her dark, shadowed gaze coming to rest on the bright blue fire of Trish’s. Trish’s hands on her shoulders were a heavy weight, and yet they felt less of a burden, more of an anchor.

“You kept us safe,” Trish said with emphasis, giving her a brief squeeze with every other word. “You did everything within your power to keep us safe. And because of you, we are now. Because of you, we have our lives back, under our own control- our control, not his. You took your own life back, Jessica, and there is nothing wrong about that. Nothing.”

“Did I, though?” Jessica said, the words brittle. “Is my life still really mine? Do you think I feel in control, Trish? Is my life really how it was, before I took it back? Is your life?”

She was speaking faster now, more aggression in her tone as her words built momentum. 

“Tell me, Trish, are you still the same girl who never got choked out by her brain-controlled lover? Who doesn’t feel she has to lock herself up in her home behind six dead bolts and doormen and learning Asian self defense moves, just in case someone wants her dead? Are you the same girl that Kilgrave whose tongue never jabbed its way down Kilgrave’s throat?”

“Jessica,” Trish said quietly, her grip gentling, but Jessica was unable to stop herself, didn’t even hear her words. She was lost in them, lost in the rush of her own cynical, despairing flood of thought.

“Is Ruben the same guy who had a beating heart? What about his sister Robin? Is Malcolm still the same guy who would never take dope, let alone get an addiction to it? Hey, is Hope and her entire family still walking around among the living these days? And what about L-“

Jessica choked on the name rising to the tip of her tongue, actually gagging against the effort of speaking Luke’s name. She knew from speaking to Claire Temple that he was okay; he had not been permanently damaged by his seizures or the direct shot to the face. Still, unexpected memories of his large body, helpless and twitching uncontrollably or all too motionless from what she had done to him, sometimes rose up and overwhelmed her with guilt, grief, and pain at what she had done to him, of what the ultimate outcome could have been. A sob burst from her throat unchecked, and Jessica’s head bowed, her narrow shoulders trembling with the effort of suppressing more. She lifted her fist to press it roughly against her mouth, eyes closing once more as her body fought her emotions. 

Luke could have died, because of her. Surely he knew this; it could very well be the reason he had not spoken to her since. Who would speak to the person who had almost killed them? 

When a gentle hand took hold of hers, entwining cool fingers through hers, Jessica didn’t make the effort to pull them away. Trish’s voice was pitched low and gentle, and she was leaned close enough to Jessica’s ear that she could feel the vibration of her speaking against her skin. 

“You’re not the same,” she acknowledged, squeezing Jessica’s fingers tightly in her own. “But that doesn’t mean you’re worse for it, or that you aren’t acceptable as you are. Being changed, even being damaged, is not your fault, and it doesn’t make you wrong. You are needed in this world, Jessica.”

She paused, and Jessica heard her swallow heavily, her voice dropping lower. 

“I need you. I need you to be here in this world.”

Trish didn’t say to her that she loved her. It wasn’t a word that passed often or casually past her lips, and for Jessica, it had happened only one, and only in coded form. But Jessica could hear the sentiment in her voice, in the strength in her grip and the intensity emanating from her close positioning. There was a need in Trish that she didn’t give voice to, a urgency for Jessica to understand and accept what she was trying to convey to her.

Jessica could never understand how someone like Trish could truly think she was better off to have someone like Jessica in her life. But Trish believed it, would accept nothing else, and so Jessica bit down her lip, her breath coming out in a ragged exhalation through her nose, and blinked against the tears threatening to spill over. When she finally jerked her head just once in a rough semblance of a nod, Trish let out a small, relieved sigh, squeezing her hand again before letting go of Jessica and getting to her feet. 

“Come on, Jess. Time to get up and join the living.”


	3. Chapter 3

Trish had no supernatural powers, supposedly, no super strength or reflexes, no mind control or x-ray vision. Somehow, though, she was almost eerily persuasive when she set out to be, almost like she had a more subtle and manipulative mind control ability of her own. Rather than commands, she used convincing words, emotions, and charm to sway people into doing what she wanted them to, and more often than not, for everyone other than her own mother, it seemed to work. Sometimes it even worked on Jessica. 

So because she was persistent with her warm, concerned eyes and her alternating pleas and prodding, she managed to get Jessica to her feet and into the bathroom for something other than strictly bodily eliminations for the first time in several days. With Trish nudging her along, Jessica almost sleepwalked through the monotony of brushing her teeth, taking a shower, and changing into clothes that were fairly clean, if wrinkled.

Trish, to Jessica’s irritation, wasn’t satisfied just to see her in motion. She actually stayed in Jessica’s bedroom, straightening up her few belongings until Jessica snapped at her that she wasn’t paying for her cleaning services, and even then, Trish wasn’t offended enough to respond. Instead, she looked Jessica over critically as the other woman fumbled with the straps of her bra, her fingers clumsily attempting to buckle its hooks behind herself after days of making no effort at using fine motor skill movements at all.

“Perve much?” Jessica muttered at her, raising an eyebrow as she finally succeeded in getting the bra somewhat comfortably situated and reached for the shirt Trish had put aside for her. “ I didn’t know Patsy was considering swinging over to the lesbo side of the fence. Do we need to put you on Ellen, or can we just release a new single? “Hey Hey, I’m Actually Gay Gay?”

“Oh, shut up,” Trish said without anger to the words; in fact, Jessica saw her hide a smirk. “I’m just noticing, you’ve lost weight. You really can’t live off the calories of booze, you know. You’re getting too skinny.”

“Too skinny? Damn, didn’t know a celebrity could ever think such a thing was possible. What’s next, being too rich, too pretty?”

“I’ll let you know if that ever happens,” Trish said without missing a beat. “No danger yet. I mean it, Jess, you barely touched any of the food I left for you.” She stood, gesturing towards the door of Jessica’s bedroom towards her kitchen area. “And you don’t have anything to eat in this place other than some expired hot sauce and ketchup. I didn’t get you any groceries, because I knew it would go to waste by the time you decided you might consider eating them, and I couldn’t bring myself to buy the Slim Jims and Cheeze Whiz that you probably exist off of normally.” 

“Don’t forget Doritos and pizza,” Jessica reminded her dryly. 

“Right, very balanced,” Trish sighed. “How about I go get some Chinese? Or maybe Japanese? I’ll eat with you, at least it will get some vegetables in you.”

Jessica shrugged, running her hand through the wet ends of her hair rather than hunting down a brush or comb. It was a gesture that always made Trish cringe, horrified at the split ends that she could cause, but for once, Trish managed to watch without comment as she waited for her response.

“Okay, I guess. Bring back bourbon too.”

“Will you be okay until I come back?” Trish pressed, a faint furrow forming at her brow. 

“Trish, I’m not a toddler who might jam her finger in an electric socket if you take your eyes off me,” Jessica exhaled, rolling her eyes. “I’ll be fine.”

“No, you’re capable of causing far more damage to yourself than a toddler could.”

Jessica made a noise of irritation in her throat and gave Trish a little push towards the apartment’s doorway.

“Did you seriously drag me up so you could stand here and stare at me? Because this is as far as I’m going right now, I’m not leaving this apartment until the rest of my booze supply is gone. Go or don’t go, but stop talking about it.”

Trish left, emphasizing with an overly searching once-over in Jessica’s direction that she would be back soon. And she probably would be, but her definition of soon and Jessica’s didn’t always coincide. 

Jessica had thought she would be relieved when Trish was absent, taking her nearly suffocating concern and caring with her. But instead her best friend’s absence felt strange and unsettling, almost as though she had taken a piece of Jessica’s body with her, leaving an empty, aching sensation in its wake. 

She hadn’t wanted to go with her; she wasn’t ready for that sort of pushing of herself into a semblance of normal human activity. But she hadn’t realized how hard it might be to be conscious and sober alone. 

With abrupt, jerky movements, Jessica returned to the bathroom, roughly washing her face more to invoke a physical sensation of some kind than because it needed a second washing after her shower. Picking up the comb she had earlier let drop, she began to pull it through the damp tangles of her hair, avoiding looking her reflection in the eyes. 

“You’ll tear it from your scalp if you keep that up, you know,” an all too familiar voice spoke up smoothly. “You know how to style your hair, Jessica, using a blow dryer, and conditioner. Surely you remember how much you loved for me to brush and style your hair?”

Jessica stilled, her skin going cold and taut with dread. Barely allowing her eyes to shift back to the mirror, she was aware of her already pale skin draining further of color, her lips parting in fear. Just as she had anticipated, there he was, smiling in his usual self-satisfied manner, arms crossed across his purple-clad chest, just inches away from her back. He could have reached out and touched her, and Jessica braced herself for this unpleasant fear.

“Patsy’s right, you know,” Kilgrave continued, cocking his head to the side as he regarded her reflection. “You’re getting too slim, Jessie. Why don’t you and I go out for Italian, add some flesh to those bones? You know how much we enjoyed our dinners out.”

“Shut up,” Jessica ground out, the words barely understandable even to her own ears. “You’re not here. You’re not real.”

He couldn’t be. She had seen his body drop, had watched as the last breath, the last thought left him forever. This was a hallucination, a fear, the beginning of a panic attack. 

And yet she could hear his voice so clearly, could almost feel his breath stir her hair. And even as she denied his reality, Kilgrave was not going away.

“I may not be real in the physical, literal, breathing sense of the word, Jessie,” Kilgrave said, his smile no lessened as he nodded in allowance of her denial. “But that doesn’t mean I no longer exist.”

He stepped closer, his voice dropping, the words slow but no less intense, even seductive in tone. 

“You know me, Jessica, better than anyone. We lived together, explored the world together and each other’s bodies and thoughts along with it. And now I know you too. We have become one, Jessica. If you know what I would say or do in a given situation, just as I knew that of you, then I am still here, through you and your knowledge and memory of me. I still exist, because you do.”

He paused, letting this horrific declaration sink in, before continuing. “We’re tied together, Jessica, forever. You took my life, felt my last breath against your fist. You were the last person to touch my still living skin. You don’t think that will stay with you forever, Jessica? You don’t think that I will be with you, very much living in your thoughts and mind- forever?”

He laughed, inclining his head towards the back of her head until his image nearly overlapped hers. “You may have killed my body, Jessie, but you can never kill my essence. I’m with you, love- always.”

Jessica’s fist shot out, slamming into the mirror’s glass surface. As she watched her face, along with Kilgrave’s, splinter and break apart, glass shards flying outward, she was unaware of any pain in her fist, even as her skin slit and blood dripped down into the sink’s porcelain tile. She whirled around, ready to face Kilgrave on and lash out at him too, but there was nothing, no one, behind her. She was alone in the bathroom, if not in her thoughts.

Screw Trish and her takeout. Jessica couldn’t stand one more second in this apartment, because no matter who left out from it, she would never feel alone.

88

Jessica lost count of which bars she frequented, and how many she was escorted or shoved out of. Her only directive was to drink as much as possible, as quickly as possible, to lose herself and her thinking into a state of inebriation that would take her mind away into anywhere or anything but her present reality. She carried no phone with her; there was no need for it, as she didn’t intend to talk to anyone beyond the bartenders. She was lucky she had thought to grab her wallet before fleeing her apartment, or she might have been forced to choose between having to flirt enough to get drinks bought for her or hold up a liquor store.

Jessica had only vague, shadowy almost-memories of fighting with someone, and she still wasn’t sure whether or not the person had deserved her aggression or how it was that she ended up taking as many hits as she gave out. It was possible she had stumbled across another with super powers of some kind, or else someone who worked out quite a lot and was far more sober than she was to focus his blows. What she remembered somewhat more clearly was the steady throbbing of her split, bloodied knuckles, trying to wipe them off on her t-shirt and dragging blood over its surface. She remembered catching a glimpse of her own reflection in a shop window as she stumbled down the streets and laughing, then holding back tears at the wild-eyed, rumpled mess of a person she saw. She dimly noted blood on her lips and chin and wondered if she had bit her lip or got hit in the fight and not noticed.

The time in between seeing her reflection in the store window and her journey to Trish’s balcony was a missing piece of the puzzle of her day, one not likely to come back to her, so Jessica could not be sure how long it took her to end up at the other woman’s apartment or how many stops she made along the way. She did remember having to grab for the railing to pull herself over, having drunkenly miscalculated her leap up, and banging her shin hard enough that she swore out loud, laughing and hissing in pain simultaneously. 

She didn’t knock on Trish’s sliding glass door, as she usually would. To Jessica, in her state of intoxicated partial reasoning, knocking would equal a request for help, an admission of need, and that was something she refused. Even drunk, bleeding, and feeling so empty inside it left an actual pain worse than that of her torn skin, it seemed one step too much, impossible, a line she would edge near but not cross over, not without a hand pulling her through. 

But she was still drawn here, all the same. Drawn to Trish, to the safety and relative comfort and acceptance she could draw from her and in her home. And so she was drawn to her balcony like a moth drawn to a porch light, lingering outside, but unable to enter or ask for admission. 

Instead Jessica lay down on the concrete surface of the balcony, resting her head against one stretched out arm, and let her eyes half close. She could have not summoned a reasonable guess of how much time passed, or whether or not she had actually dozed off into sleep, before she heard the balcony door slide back and felt Trish’s hands against her, gently pulling her up to a seated position. Her soft voice murmured words Jessica didn’t respond to and could barely make sense of, and as her arm slipped around Jessica’s waist, supporting her, Jessica let herself lean into her, her head coming to rest heavily against Trish’s shoulder. 

With some effort, Trish managed to hoist Jessica more or less to her feet. With Jessica’s feet clumsy, dragging, and a good portion of her weight leaned into her, Trish helped her inside her living room and settled her onto her couch, as she had many other times before. As she knelt to take off Jessica’s shoes, then spread the blanket thrown over the couch’s back over the length of Jessica’s huddled body, Jessica let out a breath that was somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh.

“Supposed to be my job,” she muttered, the words slurred even to her own ears. “Supposed to be the one helping you…saving you. You’re taking over my job.”

“Everyone needs help sometimes, Jess,” Trish said quietly. She smoothed Jessica’s hair back from her face, her hand lingering against the side of her head. “Even super heroes.”

“Told you I’m not a hero,” Jessica insisted, moving her head a little under Trish’s hand, but not enough to dislodge her. “Never was….never will be, now.”

“You are,” Trish countered, firm now, carding her fingers with some pressure through Jessica’s hair and giving a light tug. “Nothing you do to yourself takes away from that. You are, you were, and you will still be. This matters, what you do to yourself, Jess, but it isn’t who you are. This isn’t who you are.”

She sighed, letting her hand drop away, and shook her head, seeming to be speaking to herself more than to Jessica. “But you’re probably too drunk to remember me saying this now, aren’t you…and you won’t believe me, when you’re sober enough for me to tell you again later.”

Jessica could hear the resignation, the frustration in Trish’s voice. Why couldn’t the woman see by now that it was better for her to leave Jessica alone? And if Jessica knew this for herself, why the fuck had she come here all the same?

She remembered how Trish used to come to her for comfort, as a teenager. It was always in the dark, when Jessica was asleep or pretending to be, and neither had to see or acknowledge the other’s expression. It would happen at least a few times a week, after a hard day of work, cruel tabloid articles, or especially relentless cruelty from her mother. Trish would ease open Jessica’s door, whisper her name, and then, when Jessica didn’t answer, pad across the floor and slip into bed beside her. Trish would curl up beside her, spooning her from behind, press her face into Jessica’s shoulder, and cry with such quiet hopelessness that even so close, Jessica could barely hear her.

Most of the time, Jessica pretended that she was still sleeping, that she couldn’t hear and didn’t know. She didn’t know what else to do, how to comfort or help anyone, or what it was that Trish needed or wanted beyond her presence. Besides, hearing her sadness made her so angry for Trish that she didn’t trust herself not to burst into some kind of violence if she let herself act or move. But sometimes, she would let her hand drift over Trish’s, pressed against her stomach or waist, and lace their fingers together, squeezing just hard enough for Trish to know she was there, that she could at least be there while Trish cried.

Trish might have been able to let herself cry when she needed, but Jessica never could. Not with her, and very rarely even when alone. So how was it that right now, for Trish to care for her, to take care of her, hurt badly enough that she perilously close to tears? How was it that Trish’s expressions of love for her could sometimes feel like a sort of death, that being exposed to gentleness could be more painful than being physically hurt? 

Things were supposed to be better now, with Kilgrave gone. Jessica was supposed to be better. So why the fuck did everything still hurt so damn much? 

She didn’t know that she was speaking out loud, nor did she register that somehow against all inclinations to let it happen, she had started to cry, until Trish’s fingertips gently brushed beneath her eyes. This only seemed to trigger more to come, and when Jessica tensed her face, closing her eyes against their pressure, Trish sighed, letting her hand drift down to her shoulder. 

“I’m here,” she said quietly. “You can push me away, but you can’t me leave entirely. Ever. Let me be here, Jessica. Let me hurt with you, if that’s all I can do. Let me in.”

It was ridiculous, even crazy of Trish to want this, to offer it up as though it were some sort of privilege. And it wasn’t like it would change anything or take it away; she couldn’t scrub Jessica’s mind of all its demons or make her life start over. Letting Trish shoulder some of Jessica’s difficulties wouldn’t half them; it would just spread it out to infect her too. Couldn’t Trish see that- didn’t she get that she should spare herself, and leave Jessica to deal with all her shit alone?

But Trish wouldn’t see, didn’t want to see. And as impossible as it was, somehow her presence there, touching her, caring about her, hurting with Jessica as she hurt, actually did seem to ease just a little of the intense pressure in Jessica’s chest, to slow the rapidness of her breathing. And eventually the lingering image of Kilgrave’s face and the last echoes of his voice were replaced by the warmth of Trish’s presence nearby, the slow, steady noise of her quiet breaths. 

It was Trish who fell asleep first, breathing evenly, her head lolled against Jessica’s, her weight slight but solid against Jessica’s side. Jessica was far from sober, but she was not drunk enough anymore to feel comfortable letting herself remain with the other woman and risk joining her in sleep, or waking up in a tangled mass of limbs and hair. So she gently eased Trish away from her, settling her flat on the couch and covering her with the blanket folded beside them. With several glances back to make sure Trish was not stirring awake, Jessica retreated out her balcony, making sure to lock and shut the door behind herself. With an only slightly unsteady jump down to the sidewalk, she began to make her way back to her own apartment, head down, hands stuffed in her pockets, her footsteps slow and almost soundless in the night.

It was better to pass out in her in her own apartment, where she wouldn’t be Trish’s problem or focus anymore. Trish would probably be annoyed to wake up and find her gone, but it was for her best, and her safety. 

It was past four am when Jessica finally arrived to the gloomy, dark walls she rented as her shelter, if not her home. Without bothering to continue walking the extra few steps it would take to her bed, she flopped facedown, fully dressed, across her couch, buried her face in both arms, and closed her burning eyes. How was it possible to be so damn tired when she had done nothing but lay in bed for days? 

With this as her last distant, musing thought, Jessica gave into sleep, her body nevertheless no less relaxed in her rest. 

88

“Well, well, darling, we meet again.”

There he was, as before, his lean frame leaned casually against the door of Jessica’s bedroom wall. Kilgrave had never set foot in Jessica’s apartment before; there had never been a reason for him to. But he was there now, very much solidly present. Jessica could even see the faint outline of his shadow on the floor, cast by the faint light of her bedside lamp.

“Not again,” she groaned, shaking her head, pressing the palm of her hand hard against her temple, where she could feel her pulse begin a steady pound. “How the hell did you get in, did you make Malcolm or Trish give you a key? This is my bedroom, MINE, and my fucking apartment too. So get the fuck out of here before I throw you through the door. It’s been broken three times already, I’ll be very fucking happy to break it for a fourth.”

“So very rude, Jessica, where are your manners? Speaking like that, to a guest in your home,” Kilgrave tutted, shaking his head. He made no move to obey her and showed no concern over her threat, only slightly shifting his weight. “I’ve shown you all the finer things in life, and you still persist in speaking like a common streetwalker or prison wench.”

“I’ll speak a lot more rudely if you don’t get the hell out, and not just with my mouth,” Jessica warned, raising up her fists to emphasize the point. Body tensed, prepared to fight or run, she continued, “You’re not a guest. I would never invite you here, or anywhere, of my own free will.”

“Oh, but you have, Jessica,” Kilgrave countered, seemingly unbothered by her declaration. “You see, I couldn’t be here, if you didn’t bring me here. I couldn’t exist, if it wasn’t for you, keeping me present and alive.”

Jessica’s eyebrows knit in confusion, her eyes narrowing as she regarded him with suspicion.

“What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t bring you and I don’t want you. Don’t you put this on me.”

“Oh, but it is you,” Kilgrave insisted, giving a light chuckle that made Jessica want to knock his teeth down his throat at the grating sound of it. “I’m real, and I’m here, active and alive within you. Your mind, your thoughts, your memories…your very soul, Jessica.”

He took a step closer, seeming unoffended and unfazed when Jessica instinctively took a step back, fists still raised in preparation for a fight. 

“You keep me here. You might have killed my body, but I think we know that is only one tiny aspect of what a person is. The rest of me, the important parts of me? All well and alive, right here inside you. And that, Jessica, is what matters, isn’t it? That’s what counts.”

He took another step, and Jessica’s body backed into her bed, leaving her with nowhere else to retreat. Kilgrave didn’t touch her; he only smiled, his eyes raking over her frame with slow, menacing appraisal.

“I’m here because you want me here,” he declared. “Because you refuse to let me go. And that must mean you really do want me deep down, Jessica…that you really did love me, in the end. Oh, you may put up a fuss and fight, but every woman really wants to be controlled, at heart. Forget the phony politics, a woman’s place is on a man’s arm. She likes to be taken care of…you like it, don’t you, Jessie? You like me to take care of you. I did a good job of it, you can’t deny that. I gave you everything you could ever want. Adventure, attention…pleasure.”

He didn’t give her freedom…he didn’t give her choice. He didn’t give her anything resembling genuine care and love. But as Jessica tried to say this, to refute him as she always had when capable, she found that she could no longer speak. She was frozen, helpless, as Kilgrave came closer, mere inches away.

“You want to give me that same pleasure in return,” he declared, his voice dropping huskily. “It turns you on to be wanted by me, doesn’t it, Jessie? It makes you so very hot…it makes you ache with need.”

To Jessica’s horror, she felt her core begin to throb almost immediately in response to his words, her underwear growing damp. And he was still talking, even as her breath grew short with undeniable arousal as much as panic.

“You need to take care of that, Jessica…and you need me to watch, don’t you?”

She fought it, but her hand was moving as though independent of her body, drifting down her abdomen and disappearing beneath her jeans, beneath the worn elastic of her underwear. With Kilgrave watching closely, his mouth breaking out into a wide smile, she slipped her fingers inside herself.

“That’s it, Jessica….that’s it…”

88

Jessica jerked awake with a noise somewhere between a moan and a scream bursting from her throat. Heartbeat fast as a hummingbird’s wings, her skin slick and cold with sweat, she gulped for breath, feeling as though she were drowning for oxygen. Eyes wide but not yet seeing, she lay in terror on her couch, trembling and twitching. 

After several moments, she became dimly aware of a slick moisture against her right hand, a warm pressure around it. Only then did she realize that her hand was trapped between her legs, crammed fully down her pants, several fingers inserted deep inside herself.

Her dream rushed back to her in a vivid haze of sensations, and with a sharp cry, Jessica jerked her hand out from her pants, holding it as far away from herself as possible, as though it were a despicable and dangerous objection with no connection to herself. Her normally pale skin flushed with disgust and shame, she stared at her shaking fingers, unable to comprehend how she they had come to be where they had been. Dream or not, how the fuck could she actually go through with masturbating to the thought of Kilgrave? What the fuck was wrong with her- how fucked up was she?

Getting to her feet, she went to her kitchen sink and began to scrub both hands roughly, making the water as hot as it would go and using so much soap that her skin was beginning to feel somewhat raw and chapped by the time she finally shut off the water and harshly wiped them dry. Rummaging through her cabinets, she finally located one forgotten bottle of whiskey and began to gulp it down in long swallows.

Fuck everything, herself and her fucked up brain most of all. She didn’t give a shit about Trish saying she needed to rejoin the world. Today, she was drinking.


	4. Chapter 4

For the next few days, Jessica concentrated on keeping herself as drunk as possible.

Contrary to other’s beliefs, this was not always her focus. When she was on a case, she tended to drink enough to remain slightly buzzed or to keep herself from getting ill or overcome with anxiety. When stressed or struggling to numb her feelings, she drank enough to get properly drunk or to allow herself to sleep. Now, after waking up to find herself masturbating at dream Kilgrave’s command, she bypassed buzzed, numb, and drunk and went for keeping herself full on plastered. 

She ignored all calls and texts from Trish, jumped out her own window when she heard her sister out in her hallway, threatening to come in. She treated Malcolm as a piece of furniture that happened to talk when he checked in, and his admonitions about people out in the city in need of her went unacknowledged. She kept herself out of her own apartment and in bars a good bit of the time, out of fear that she would find see Kilgrave there out the corner of her eyes or accidentally fall asleep again.

Because that was the biggest concern to Jessica currently. She was obviously getting to be pretty damn sick and twisted herself, if her subconscious could start affecting her in reality. If going to sleep made her have such fucked up dreams- dreams that she actually carried out- then sleep was obviously something she needed to be doing without. 

So for several days after her waking nightmare, Jessica did all she could to both deaden herself with booze and to keep herself stimulated enough to stay conscious, two somewhat contradictory tasks that were hardly easily to accomplish simultaneously. She resorted to getting into fights, slapping herself in the face, and going for walks throughout the city late at night in her effort to stay moving, stay active, even when her eyelids grew heavy enough that she could actually feel the skin beneath them beginning to sag. She jumped atop buildings and practiced leaping across the space between them, never mind that she was drunk enough she missed the mark a few times. Eventually, though, her body’s demands began to catch up with her. Running on limited nutrition, heightened strain, and a massive overload of alcohol mixed with a dire lack of rest eventually served to cause her to black out, her hands still loosely clutched around a bottle of bourbon. Head down on her desk, one arm hanging limply towards her lap, Jessica almost immediately segued into another all too vivid dream.

88

“You know, Jessica, I always think you’re beautiful, but I must admit that right now you look like hell.”

Jessica gritted her teeth, unsurprised to see Kilgrave standing across from her in her office space. She had no memory of how he had come to join her in her apartment, but then, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was she wanted him gone.

“Good, maybe it will deter you from raping me,” she said sarcastically. “One can only hope.”

“There she is again, that ugly rape word,” Kilgrave sighed, crossing his arms. His tone was as impatient and dismissive as it usually was when confronted with his own behavior. “Let’s not quibble over semantics, Jessica, the truth is that a woman as admirably strong and tough as you pride yourself on being could easily have resisted, had she really wanted to. You resisted later on, didn’t you?”

Jessica didn’t answer, her eyes shifting away from his. This was a point she had wrestled with to the point of tormenting herself, over and over again. If she truly could not help what she had done under Kilgrave’s influence, if she truly had not consented, how had she managed to overpower his ability later on? How could she let herself so easily off the hook, if even a small part of her had given in?

The truth was that it wasn’t the rapes, as awful as they had been, that haunted and tormented Jessica’s brain and memory the most. It was the overall violation; she had been raped not just in body, but in every part of her will. She had been forced to become someone unnatural to her, someone very much against who she was in her core. She had been made to do things she would never have consented to, would never have chosen, and to simultaneously feel that it was precisely what she wished to do. She had been made to disconnect from her emotions and her brain, her body and her soul, so that she enjoyed what she would have normally found horrifying or degrading. What truly twisted Jessica up inside was how much she had truly felt that she loved Kilgrave and everything he wanted her to do, even as she mentally bucked and rebelled against it inside herself.

That was what made it so difficult to keep from blaming herself for what had happened. That was what kept her from wanting to feel or think of anything at all. 

“I had to build up the ability to resist,” she said finally, choosing an argument that Trish had given her, but which she could not always fully accept. “I was the only person strong enough to do that much. I didn’t want any of this. I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t even want you here now, so why don’t you get the hell away from me?”

“Oh come on, Jessica,” Kilgrave scoffed, his lips quirking. “If you really wanted me gone, then you wouldn’t have brought me here with you, now, would you have? A person who doesn’t want someone near them doesn’t let them be, and we both know you’re no pushover too scared to let someone know your mind. I’m here because you want me to be, deep down. Because you’ve brought me here. Why else would you keep seeing me?”

“I didn’t bring you here,” Jessica ground out, fighting her powerful urge to reach out and use her fists to wipe the smug look from his face. “And I damn well don’t want you here. So get the hell out.”

She turned her back on him deliberately, crossing her arms, even as her goose bumps prickled her skin with her tension. She knew without needing to see that Kilgrave had not moved from his chosen post.

“You didn’t bring me here, you say, and you don’t want me here. Yet here I am,” Kilgrave pointed out. She saw him spread his arms wide out the corner of her eye. “Explain that to me, how do you think I got here, if not through you?”

“You’re dead,” Jessica said, her words slow, distinct, and heavy with disgust. “Dead, Kilgrave. I killed you with my own hand. I don’t know how you’re here, I just know you shouldn’t be. I don’t care how you’re here, or why. Ghost, vampire, drunken hallucination, I don’t give a shit, I just want you gone, for fuck’s sake.”

“Do you, Jessica? Do you really want me gone?”

The way he asked was almost conversational, and yet Jessica heard a shift in his tone, a note of danger that caught her attention. She turned her head, just enough to see him in profile, as Kilgrave continued to speak.

“If that’s what you really want, Jessica Jones, for me to be gone from you forever, then I think you know what it is you need to do. There’s only one way to make sure you never see me again, never hear my voice or sense me near. If that’s what you really want, then you need to listen to me, Jessica, because there is a solution.”

Jessica swallowed around the constriction in her throat, pressing clammy palms against her upper thighs. She didn’t verbally respond to Kilgrave, but her head inclined just slightly, a nod of acknowledgement that she was listening, that she did want to hear his proposal, wild as it may be. If it would keep her from being pursued by Kilgrave’s ghost, if it would bring her any sort of relief- well, it was worth hearing about. 

Kilgrave waited to go on until he was certain he had built up the maximum suspense, until Jessica felt that she was ready to climb out of her own skin with her anxious discomfort. Only then did he speak, his words low, almost soothing, but deadly serious.

“Kill yourself, Jessica Jones. The only way to make certain I’m gone from your existence, the only way to end my presence in your life and dreams…is to kill yourself. So if want me gone, then kill yourself. Do it now.”

There was no hesitation on Jessica’s part, no pause to consider her own feelings or thoughts. She simply turned and walked into her bedroom, her feet carrying her directly towards the small drawer in her nightstand. Supernatural abilities or not, she always kept a knife there, just in case she might need it immediately if awakened to a dangerous situation. Sliding the drawer open, she took the large kitchen knife into her hand, the handle surprisingly light in her grasp. Kilgrave glided forward to stand in the bedroom’s doorway, eyes bright as he spoke to her again. 

“That’s it, Jessie, you know what you need to do. You want me gone, don’t you? You want to be at peace, left alone by everyone who never did understand….and you know how to make it happen. Kill yourself. You know it’s the only way.”

Her breathing shallow, mouth bone dry, Jessica tightened her grip around the knife’s hilt, testing its strength, her dark eyes tracing the length and sharpness of the knife’s blade. Then she raised her arm high, preparing to bring it down in a fast, brutal descent, directly into the center of her own heart.

88

Jessica woke with a shiver and a snort, dazed. She was standing, a bewildering enough way to find herself immediately after sleep, but it was the knife in her hand, held mere inches from her heart, that really shook her into an alert status. 

With a stunned cry, she jerked her hand back, arm’s length away from her torso, and flung the knife across the room with great force. It spun in the air, its blade deeply embedding itself in the wall of Jessica’s bedroom, but its new distance did not reassure her. Breathing shallowly, Jessica spread her hands wide over her heart, distantly aware of it booming in loud, erratic lack of rhythm in her chest. She rubbed her hands roughly over her sternum, both breasts, her collar bone, and even her stomach, searching for a wound, but there was no blood, no injury of any kind. Even her shirt was untorn and undamaged. 

She was okay. Well, not okay; no one could wake up seconds from plunging a knife into their own body and determine themselves to be okay. But she was uninjured, she was conscious, and somehow, perhaps miraculously, she was alive.

Jessica realized when her knees began to buckle how badly her legs were trembling, threatening to stop holding her upright much longer. She lowered herself into a seated position on her bed, taking a handful of her sheet and bunching it up tightly in her fist until the fabric tore in two. She could feel how close to tears she was but swallowed against them repeatedly, forcing them away. She could preserve that much in the way of dignity- it might be all she had left of it. 

Her head was throbbing, and Jessica was very aware of being hungover. But what had just happened could not be attributed to this. She was not just disoriented from waking up after a night of drinking, or even because of sudden awakening from a nightmare. She could not shrug off what had just happened as confusion, the effects of over indulgence, or even typical, expected symptoms of PTSD. And she could not deny to herself that she was frightened- not by dream, so much as the reality she had woke up to find herself in the midst of.

She had been about to kill herself, or at the very least, stab herself badly enough to severely injure herself. She had dreamed that Kilgrave told her to kill herself- and then she had awakened with a knife inches from her heart, tightly clasped in her own fist. Jessica had no doubt that had she slept much longer, she would have followed through on the dream’s command.

What the fuck was wrong with her? She had never been known to sleepwalk before, and this made more than once that she was aware of. What was happening to her that she was doing this now- now, when Kilgrave was dead and gone?

It made no sense. Kilgrave was dead- Jessica was certain of it this time. She didn’t believe in ghosts, although she was beginning to think that she should revisit the possibility. But even if spirits were possible in theory, how could one enter her dreams, command her actions, and manage to influence her enough that she would actually obey them? Hadn’t the whole reason Kilgrave’s power worked against people was because of the physical formation of his body- some kind of pheromone or hormone, that his ghost or dream form shouldn’t even be capable of enacting against her? 

Even if he still could someone exist, and could somehow slip into and give commands from her dreams- even then, the fact remained that more than once, Jessica had proven she had become immune to him. She was not helpless in the face of his wishes. The very fact that he was dead by her hand backed this up. 

So this couldn’t, shouldn’t be real. There was no way what had just happened should be possible- and yet Jessica had been inches from a self-inflicted death. The only possibility remaining that made any sort of sense to her was that she had finally lost her mind entirely.

Had to be it- she was just crazy, absolutely fucking insane. She must have some kind of death wish, and she wasn’t safe to herself or anyone else who dared to be near her. 

As Jessica finally stood, padding into her bathroom and roughly washing her face, she considered whether or not she should let Malcolm or maybe Trish know what had been happening. Almost as quickly as the idea occurred to her, she decided against it. They would just get hurt, however they tried to help her or work things out. All she could do for them and herself was to keep herself separated from them and any other living, breathing human being she could harm. She was already good at ignoring them when she urge struck her; she could up the game a bit more, with this much at stake. 

Let them assume what they would- that she was drunk and passed out, thoughtless, or a selfish asshole who didn’t give a damn about their concern. Hell, it was more or less all true anyway. The last thing she could do, if her full-on self-destruction had just become inevitable, was talk to them or let them be anywhere within her vicinity. She had just become far too dangerous and unpredictable for that risk. 

And as for sleeping- well, that was no longer an option either. She was super human, sort of. She could live off coffee and adrenaline, couldn’t she?


	5. Chapter 5

For a few days, Jessica survived without sleep. She couldn’t call her existence for those hours much more than survival- it certainly wasn’t living in any sense of the word. She dragged herself through early hours of the morning and the latest, most silent moments of the night with massive amounts of booze and caffeine, throwing herself headlong into work the first night. By the second night, she focused less on work and more on alternating drinking substances, and by night three, she started looking for any excuse she could to throw a punch. By then, her temper was short enough that she didn’t have to look very hard for one.

By day four, she had escaped arrest by the skin of her teeth, had been thrown out of several bars, and had to resort to pacing her apartment like a hamster on its treadwheel, until the neighbor with the apartment below her called the landlord to complain. Her head felt thick and heavy, clouded and slow in thought, and her eyes drooped even when she flicked water over her face. She had thrown out every knife she kept in the apartment, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make something else into a weapon against herself or someone else, if the opportunity popped up. 

Jessica did what she could to keep herself awake, as much as a person could while avoiding any sort of actual conversation or meaningful interaction with another human being. But early into the fifth day, her efforts failed, and she dozed off at last. And when she awakened, for the first time, she wasn’t alone. This time, she had a man named Nolan, chained up on the wall across from her. A man who said she was the one who had done it- and she couldn’t deny that he was undoubtedly correct.

88

After Nolan’s disbelieving accusation- his correction of her assumptions, more accurately- Jessica didn’t waste any further time with him in the warehouse. She didn’t want to hear anything else he might have to say, any further information that this stranger had access to and she herself could not recall. Instead, she left him still restrained, calling out to her and cursing in the same spot she had apparently affixed him to. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to release him. But what the hell would she do after that? She wasn’t afraid of him attacking her in revenge- hell, she deserved it, if he could get in a good shot or two. But what if he reported her? What would be her defense- commanded via dream? Sleepwalking?

She was still shaking as she stepped onto the cracked and sinking sidewalk nearby, feeling as though everything in her world had suddenly tilted sideways and scrambled into pieces that no longer came anywhere near fitting together. Shaking her head, she started to laugh, wryly at first, then with increasing force. She doubled over, gasping as pained giggles continued to sputter out of her, scraping at her throat.

Spreading her fingers over her chest, Jessica tried to swallow down her laughter as she fumbled through her jeans and jacket pockets with her spare hand. She was looking for a cigarette, no matter how old and crushed it might be, even though she smoked very rarely and had never much enjoyed it. It would give her something to focus on, something to do with her hands, and it would be pretty difficult for further laughter while inhaling smoke. 

She found her cell phone instead. She studied its smooth surface, weighing it in her hand, and then scrolled through its limited number of contacts, highlighting Trish’s number. She stared at it until the numbers blurred on the screen and the phone began to feel heavy in her trembling hand. Around herself she was vaguely aware of the early morning light beginning to stretch across the sky; Trish would be up soon, if not yet. 

There was nothing Trish could do for her. There was nothing Trish should do for her. And yet Jessica jabbed her number with her thumb, lifted the phone to her ear, and listened to it ring several times before a sleepy voice responded.

“Hello?”

Jessica didn’t say anything at first. Her breath catching, she swallowed several times, trying to force her breathing to slow. When she didn’t receive a quick reply, Trish spoke again, sounding much more alert and concerned.

“Hello? Jess? Jess, what is it? Where are you?”

“I….I don’t know,” Jessica managed, her voice strained and strange even to her own ears. “I don’t know, Trish.” 

“You don’t know where you are? Jessica, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“No,” Jessica said faintly, not entirely sure which question she was answering. The answer was the same for each. “No, not this time.” 

“This time? Jessica, have you been drinking?” Trish asked, a hint of irritation mingling in with her worry. 

Jessica began to snicker again, her ribs aching from the renewed strain. “You- you gotta ask? That’s seriously a question you gotta ask?”

She continued to snort in a tired, jerky manner, but the catch in her throat was spreading, and she could hear the start of threatening tears distorting how they emerged. She sounded crazy to herself, but that was fair; she was going fucking crazy, wasn’t she? 

“Jessica! Jessica, what’s going on, tell me what’s wrong!” 

Trish sounded sharper now, but Jessica heard fear as much as anger in her words. It was about time for that- Trish should be scared. Problem was, she should be scared of her, rather than for her. Maybe now she was finally starting to see why. 

Straightening up a little, Jessica took another unsteady breath in, swiping back strands of hair from her face. She swallowed, wishing powerfully for something to drink, before beginning to attempt an explanation.

“I’ve….I’ve been having dreams. About Kilgrave. Saying things about me…telling me to do things.”

“Oh,” Trish murmured, sounding unsurprised, even somewhat relieved. “Oh, Jess, I know that’s hard for you. It’s-“

“No, not like that,” Jessica interrupted, understanding her assumptions.

Obviously, Trish would think Jessica was referring to her usual brand of nightmares, the ones she had always struggled through before Kilgrave’s death. As traumatic as they had been to endure, they had nevertheless not been anywhere near as terrible as the latest. As far as she knew, none of her nightmares before his death had resulted in her actually hurting anyone.

“Not like the ones before. These are different, Trish. Worse. Way, way worse. Not because of what they are, but because…because of what I do. I’m acting them out, Trish. The…the dreams. I’m doing what he says to do in them, in real life. For real.”

She could picture Trish’s expression, miles away, the way her nose would scrunch up with her confusion as she processed Jessica’s words.

“I don’t understand, Jess. What are you saying?”

“I’m sleepwalking,” Jessica said with some impatience, scraping a hand through her hair roughly enough that her nails dragged over her scalp. “While I’m dreaming. At least, I guess I am, because when I wake up, I’ve done it, or I’m doing it. Whatever he told me to do.”

“Jess….are you sure you’re-“

“I almost killed myself, Trish,” Jessica interrupted, having no patience for Trish’s questions or doubts. “I had a knife, ready to stab myself in the heart. I might heal fast, but I don’t think I heal fast enough to survive that.”

Trish gasped, her horror sharp and crackling through the line.

“Jessica! What- when- are you okay?! Why would you….how-“

“Because of him!” Jessica repeated, almost shouting. She began to pace the sidewalk, her steps quick, agitated, and carrying her only a small distance before retracing her previous path. “Because he said to do it, so I did. I could be dead now, Trish, and other people could have been too. He said to do it, and so here I am, out at the ass crack of dawn, with a guy I’ve never seen before in my life, who’s been beat to pulp and is tied up in a warehouse I’ve never been to. Am I there to rescue him, or catch the guy who did this to him? No, because according to him, I’m the one who did this to him. I don’t remember it, but I’m pretty sure the man is right. Kilgrave said to do it, so it must have been me.”

She started to laugh again, but there was no humor in the noise. She sounded far closer to hysteria than mirth. 

“I….I need help, Trish. Fuck, I really need help, because I’ve lost my mind.”

“Okay,” Trish said quickly, her voice forcibly calm, even gentle in a way that Jessica would normally not tolerate. “Okay, Jess, I hear you. I’ll be right there, okay? I’m getting dressed, I’ll come to you. Stay where you are, and I’ll be there soon.”

“What…how?” Jessica managed, getting the involuntary laughter back into a semblance of control. She pressed a hand against her chest, dimly aware of the hollow ache around her heart. “I don’t even know where I am. How can you?”

“You think you’re the only one with some skills?” Trish gave a snort, and this time Jessica heard a real smile, even a smug sense of pride in her voice. “I put a GPS tracking device on your phone long ago. How else would I ever know what you’re up to and if you’re still alive when you go AWOL on me?”

Jessica would normally have had plenty to say about that, most of it explicit. But today, she could only be relieved that Trish didn’t know how to stick to a sense of boundaries. 

“I’ll be there soon, Jess,” she repeated. “Ten minutes. Hang on, okay?”

It was probably closer to eight when Trish pulled into a stop in front of Jessica’s slumped position on the sidewalk, her gleaming, expensive car appearing very much out of place in its new surroundings. She parallel parked, shut the engine off, and jumped out, keys in hand, hurrying over to Jessica. Recently awake or not, the woman still managed to look polished and pulled together, even in loose work out pants and with her hair pulled back in a smooth ponytail. Jessica could not imagine how she herself must look in comparison. Her breath tasted sour, her hair was a mass of snarls from her fingers’ compulsive pulling, and her knuckles were a mass of cuts from whatever it was she had done to Nolan. God knows how deep and dark the circles under her eyes must be by now.

Trish made no comment on her appearance, but Jessica saw her swallow, her eyes pained as they took her in. Stepping close, she simply wrapped her arms around Jessica in a firm but gentle hug, for once disregarding Jessica’s usual discomfort with affection. 

“It’s going to be okay,” she murmured near her ear, her hand pressing between Jessica’s shoulder blades. “We’ll figure this out, Jess. Whatever’s going on, whatever is happening, we’ll figure it out and we’ll fix it. Together.”

Jessica’s hands did not, could not lift to hug her back, but she did let herself relax ever so slightly into Trish’s touch, letting her head tilt forever into something close to a nod. Trish gave her a final squeeze and then released her, stepping back and lifting her chin in the look of determination Jessica knew so well.

“Show me what we’re dealing with. We’ll take care of it.”

She stayed close to Jessica as Jessica lead her back to the warehouse, not quite hovering, but close. Usually it would annoy Jessica, provoking her into snapping; today, she was too mentally and physically exhausted to mind. Pushing open the building’s heavy door, she stepped inside, holding it for Trish to follow. Trish wrinkled her nose at the musty, thick odor of its interior, blue eyes widening when she took in Nolan’s frame on the wall across from them. As his head came up, noting Jessica’s return and the new person beside her, he started to call out.

“Help, get me out of here, please!”

Then his eyes bulged, and he gave a disbelieving laugh, shaking his head. “Fuck, Patsy Walker? For real? What the hell are you doing here? Are you in on this too?”

Trish bristled, pulling herself up to her full height and lifting her chin. 

“It’s Trish now, thank you. And no, I’m not “in on” anything. I’m here to get you out of this, but there will be some ground rules to go over.”

Jessica stared at her. What exactly was she doing, what was she going for with this approach? But Trish, seeming to see no reason to inform her ahead of time, continued forward toward Nolan, speaking with authority. Only then did Jessica notice the large backpack across the woman’s shoulders, bulging with whatever contents she had packed it with.

“I’ll let you off, safe and relatively unharmed, and neither of us will ever contact you again. You’ll receive generous compensation, in cash, for your suffering and time. In return, you will go about your business and never speak a word of what happened here to anyone. Not about my involvement, and not of hers,” she said, nodding towards Jessica. “If you do….well, let’s just say it’s a better deal for you if you take your money and go, don’t you think?”

Nolan squinted bloodshot eyes, sniffing towards Trish as though smelling something foul. He had a lot of room; he didn’t exactly look or carry the odor of someone who had recently bathed or used deodorant.

“And if I don’t? If I go report you crazy bitches for this?”

Trish’s eyebrows rose in the haughty, amused manner that made her look every bit the spoiled, heartless bitch that Jessica had once assumed her to be.

“You’re accusing Trish Walker, a prominent celebrity, and Jessica Jones, a woman who has literally had a hand in saving the world and people’s lives more often than you’ve probably changed your underwear. Those are the crazy bitches you’re going to tell people beat you up and held you hostage?”

She laughed, the sound scornful, dismissive- and enough like her mother that Jessica looked at her sharply.

“If they even take a minute to listen to you, it’s very doubtful that people would believe you, Joe Nobody, over us, the people you’re accusing. And if they did- well, come on now, Nolan. If Jessica Jones and Trish Walker really did those things to you, they must have had a damn good reason. What sort of things are in your history that would make a super hero and a celebrity target you?”

She leaned in closer, blue eyes wide and sort of scary-looking, even to Jessica. 

“Trust me, Nolan. If Jessica wanted you dead, then you would be, easily, a thousand times over. So why don’t you do the smart thing here and chalk this up to a misunderstanding that you can walk away from far richer for the inconvenience.”

Jessica could see the man’s brain whirring, clicking through the possibilities and the limited options available to him. Finally he gave a grudging nod.

“Glad you agree,” Trish said brightly, brushing her hands together as though clapping off stray dirt. “Great. So we’ll get you down, you give us a discreet time and place to meet you with tomorrow with cash, and we’ll go on with our lives.”

And as Jessica watched, this was exactly what happened. With only minimal help from Jessica, Trish freed the man from his shackles, made an appointment to meet him with the promised cash, and watched as he staggered out the warehouse door. Jessica was still mentally reeling when Trish moved to stand beside her, resting a hand softly on her arm.

“So….things have gotten out of hand,” she said quietly, and Jessica gave a dry laugh, letting her head fall into a single nod. 

“That sums it up.”

Trish exhaled, slipping her fingers into Jessica’s, and although Jessica’s fingers lay limply against hers, not entwining, when Trish rested her head against Jessica’s shoulder, Jessica slowly let her own head shift to the side until it touched hers. They stood there for several minutes without speaking before Trish tugged at Jessica’s hand, giving it a light squeeze.

“Get in my car. Time to figure things out.” 

And for once, Jessica listened without protest to someone other than Kilgrave’s command.


	6. Chapter 6

It took less time than Jessica would have thought to explain to Trish the still not fully clear events of the past few weeks. Most of it, after all, had already been eluded to in her somewhat panicked phone call. What little she hadn’t covered was summed up much more simply than the incidents themselves had unfolded. It was only a few minutes before she leaned back against the cushy pillows of Trish’s couch, finished and exhausted not so much from speaking as from the mental impact her own words had upon her. Sitting close enough to her that their knees touched slightly, Trish’s demeanor contrasted sharply, her eyes open wide and alight with her thoughts. 

“Wow,” she said softly, and Jessica exhaled, flopping her hand over, palms up, on her own thigh.

“Yep. Wow. Hence my latest excuse for avoiding you.”

Her eyes flitted towards Trish’s kitchen area, focusing on the cabinets that usually stored at least a couple of bottles of bourbon or whiskey, but she couldn’t summon the energy to stand to look. Trish likely noticed the direction of her attention, but she ignored it, far too caught up in the story she had just heard to worry about helping Jessica with her drinking.

“Wow. And you have no idea how this is happening…because he’s definitely dead. We know this, I even got copies of the autopsy reports, photos and all-“

“Wait, you what?” Jessica interrupted, lifting her head to fix a startled look Trish’s way. “How, and why would you want that?”

“Why- well, because you thought he was dead once, and you were wrong, it pays to be completely certain,” Trish reasoned with a shrug, seeming to see nothing odd about her action. “And how, you should know that much. I’m Trish Walker, and I have money. Both things that help me get a lot of things I want, if I use them.”

She gave Jessica a small, smug smile that Jessica just rolled her eyes at in response but accepted as accurate information. 

“Okay, so you saw pictures, the guy is dead. So him doing this to me- making me do these things- it shouldn’t be possible. Yet here I am, doing them.”

“Well, there are a few possibilities,” Trish mused, furrowing her brow. “At least a few I can think of. There’s-“

“There’s only one possibility,” Jessica interrupted, her voice harsh to cover the guilt and shame behind her words. She didn’t look at Trish as she spoke, her fingers digging into her legs through her jeans. “That I’ve lost my fucking mind. No one can instruct you to do shit when they’re dead and gone, especially not in dreams. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t some psychic dream hijacker. So that basically means I’ve lost my shit completely, and now I’m acting like the psycho himself. I need locked up just to protect people from me.”

She was trembling slightly even as she tried to tense her body up, to force it not to show the level of fear she was feeling. This was what she had suspected from the first; this was what she believed to be the only possibility. Swallowing, she shot a quick look towards Trish, bracing herself for Trish’s reaction of grim agreement.

But Trish didn’t give her one. Instead, she scoffed, shaking her head in immediate dismissal.

“No, I don’t believe that, Jessica. You’re a lot of things, but you’re not crazy, and you’re certainly not a thing like Kilgrave, intentionally or otherwise.”

“Trish, I literally have a psychiatric diagnosis,” Jessica pointed out, incredulous. “From a psychiatrist that you hand selected for me. Post traumatic stress disorder, remember? Not to mention, alcoholic, actively drinking. You’re telling me between the two, I can’t hallucinate or develop delusions?”

“You could,” Trish said calmly, “but that’s not what’s happening here. I don’t believe that, and I don’t think you really do either, Jess. You might be afraid it is, but I don’t think it’s what you really believe. Besides, PTSD does not equal psychotic, and neither does drunk. What you’re telling me, what’s been happening here, is going far past a one or two time hallucination or distorted perception. And given what we know is possible from our previous experiences, you really think it’s less likely that Kilgrave really is somehow involved, whatever version of him that might be, than it’s all coming from you?”

Jessica had no real answer to that. Honestly, it was something she hadn’t wanted to explore too deeply; she had simply wanted to stop it from happening. Staying silent, she flexed her hands, looking away again. Trish lay a gentle hand on her knee, not reacting to Jessica’s twitching response or removing the touch.

“I never believed in ghosts, but I guess there’s no reason I shouldn’t, given that I never used to believe in mutants or aliens or super powered humans either,” she continued to think aloud. “So maybe his ghost is haunting you? Speaking to you while you sleep, and disappearing before you wake up? Or maybe his spirit can hijack your dreams?”

This wasn’t a possibility Jessica had considered, and it certainly wasn’t one she liked. Kilgrave had been enough of a danger when he was alive and there was some small possibility of killing him off; she hadn’t considered that he could still do the same evil shit after dying that he had taken such pleasure in while he was alive.

“Or maybe he transmitted a piece of himself, or his will, to you,” Trish murmured, eyes cast up with her thought. “You were the last person to touch him while he was still alive, Jess. You were the last person he looked at, the last person he tried to use his powers on. You were still touching him in the moment that he died. What if….what if he somehow gave a piece of himself or his ability to you, as he was dying? He affects people with his pheromones…what if some level of them sort of stuck to you? Maybe you don’t have that effect on other people, like he does…but you do on yourself? Even if only when you’re unconscious…sort of, like your unconscious fears become reality, without your being able to control it?”

“Okay, that theory is even worse than the ghost one,” Jessica maintained, holding up a hand in unconscious protest. “Way worse than the me being crazy one. How the hell would I stop this shit if it was some unconscious ability thing, gone to hell? How do I stop if it’s all my fault?”

“Not your fault, Jess, but within your control- possibly,” Trish corrected. “And actually….if that is the case, either with the ghost, or with the ability thing- or even if it is all psychological-“

“You mean if I’m crazy,” Jessica muttered darkly, but Trish ignored her.

“Even if it’s psychological, I think there’s still something we can try. Something that might have a good potential of working.”

“What, chaining me up every night while I sleep?”

Jessica was serious with the suggestion, but Trish side eyed her as though she weren’t. 

“No, Jess, let’s be focused here. I was thinking of lucid dreaming.”

When Jessica looked at her blankly, she started to explain. “There are ways that you can put yourself into a state of mind where you have control of your dreams. You create an environment where you are relaxed and empowered, and as your dream begins, you remain conscious enough that you can take over what happens and shift events in the direction you need.”

“And you know this is a thing, how?” Jessica asked, skeptical. “This sounds like some kind of infomercial with no basis in reality at all.”

“Well, I haven’t tried it for myself,” Trish admitted. “But I’ve heard about it. You can use a lot of things, apparently- music, meditations, hypnosis-“

“Okay, stop right there,” Jessica snorted, shaking her head. “Hypnosis? Like that joke of a doctor you set me up with before?”

“Okay, that might have worked if you had actually wanted it to work,” Trish accused, pointing towards Jessica defensively. “You didn’t want to be hypnotized, so of course you weren’t. And lucid dreaming is probably the same way- you have to be focused on it, and you have to want it.”

“Sounds like every other idea people ever come up with that has no proof of being an actual thing- you just didn’t want it enough for it to happen.”

Trish sighed, exasperated. “Jess, it’s like this…if it has any possibility of working, don’t you want to take the chance? It isn’t like it would take a lot of risk or effort on your part. If a little controlled dreaming- through hypnosis or otherwise- could make it where you never wake up ready to kill yourself or someone else, don’t you think it’s worth trying?”

There was nothing about her point that Jessica could argue against. And truthfully, she had no other ideas.

“Okay,” she signed, her shoulders slumping. “But if it doesn’t work…buy some chains, because I’m going to need them. And I’m not using the ones holding the warehouse guy, know who knows what diseases were in that blood.”

88

Lying under the soft comforter of Trish’s bed, wiggling herself to further conform her body against the mattress’s memory foam surface, Jessica took several breaths, aware of the tight, uncomfortable pressure in her chest. She swallowed, folding her hands across her stomach, and directed her eyes up at the ceiling, breathing out almost in a snort.

“I look and feel stupid. Like a corpse in her coffin.”

“Jessica, stop,” Trish huffed, irritation coloring her tone, before she made an effort to soften her expression and gentle her tone. “You can do this. Just close your eyes, focus on your breathing, and relax.”

Easy for her to say. She was the one who did yoga for fun. Jessica’s idea of fun was punching things and downing booze, both which Trish had refused to allow her to do as a prelude to this little experiment. 

Sighing, she closed her eyes, nevertheless aware of Trish’s presence close by. The other woman was sitting beside her, cross legged, on the bed; her very focus on Jessica was enough to make Jessica want to twitch in response. 

“Listen to the sound of my voice,” Trish said softly, gently, and although Jessica smirked, wanting to make another wisecrack, she restrained herself. “Relax the muscles of your face….your neck…your shoulders. Relax your chest. Your stomach….your legs. Breathe in…breathe out. In, out.”

This kind of hippie-dippie bullshit was not something Jessica ever wanted to spend her time on, but she had to admit, it was kind of calming, after all, to listen to Trish’s voice. Her tone seemed to be getting softer as she continued to speak, and yet Jessica didn’t have to strain to focus and hear. She twitched slightly when Trish lay a hand over hers, gently stroking her thumb across the skin of her wrist, and then relaxed, surprised that the touch wasn’t uncomfortable. It was sort of nice, even.

“Feel your body grow heavy and warm beneath my fingers,” Trish intoned. “Everywhere I touch, feel yourself grow still, silent, and relaxed.”

The hand on Jessica’s shifted up slightly as Trish very lightly stroked her fingertips over the skin of Jessica’s forearm, down her shoulder, and across the flat plane of her upper chest. The other woman continued this feather-light caress over Jessica’s other arm, down her sternum, and down the length of each leg before moving up to her face, gently smoothing over the angles of Jessica’s cheeks and temple. Jessica should feel annoyed by this; after all, the woman was treating her like some sort of dog being petted. But she felt too lazily settled in place to protest; even her thoughts slowed, sliding sluggishly over each other as her closed eyes grew heavier, requiring less effort to maintain shut. When Trish’s hand settled at last on Jessica’s hair, beginning to comb fingers slowly through, Jessica was dimly aware of the slow evenness of her own breathing.

“You’re falling asleep now,” Trish whispered. “But although your body is rested and still, feeling no anxiety or pain, your mind is focused, aware, and in control. You have the power to change anything you see, anything you experience. You are in control, Jessica…you are in control.”

Those were the last words Jessica remember before her consciousness faded; the last sensation she was aware of was Trish’s hands in her hair, a warm, firm sensation she suspected to be Trish’s lips pressed against her forehead before she went under into her dream.  
88

“Jessica Jones, we meet again. Are you starting to realize how hard it is for you stay away from me, then?”

The smug, self-satisfied tone of Kilgrave’s voice grated on Jessica’s nerves as it always did, but she made herself stay calm, made herself hold his gaze with her own. She didn’t draw back when he moved closer to her, focusing only on him. There was no need to note their surroundings; they were unnecessary detail, and if at all possible, she didn’t intend to remain in them for long.

“Well, a girl has to sleep eventually,” she retorted. “And as much as I want to never see your weasel face again, I have to if I want to go through with killing you.”

“Ah, there it is again, the ever tiresome threats and insults,” Kilgrave sighed. He spread his hands out, exaggeratedly exasperated with her. “Jessica, please, let’s come back into reality, even if that isn’t your strongest dwelling place. You can’t kill a person who no longer exists. You killed me once already, love. All that’s left here, in this reality, is you. You and what you really want. Me,” he pointed towards himself, “and you?” He pointed back at her. “One and the same. Harm me, and all you manage is harming you.”

This was something Jessica had feared to be true, but it was not what Trish believed. She did not, could not afford to believe it either, and so she shook her head once, firm in her stance of dismissal.

“I won’t believe that. I refuse to. Believing that helps you, and I refuse to help you in your games.” 

With deliberate, calculatedly slow gesture, she removed one of her boots. As Kilgrave raised an eyebrow at her, she heaved it at him, satisfied when it bounced off his chest. 

“I can touch you, you can touch me. Somehow this is real. I don’t give a damn how or why, all that matters is that it is. That it is, and what I do when I’m in the middle of it.”

Limping slightly in only one shoe, Jessica began to walk forward, her steps purposeful, eyes narrow with intent. She was grimly pleased when she saw Kilgrave’s eyes register confusion, even concern, as he put up his hands as though to ward her off from coming closer.

“Now, Jessica, stop a minute and think. What exactly is it you’re trying to do? Kill me?” He laughed, but she heard unease rather than pleasure in the sound. “I thought you were no killer. Up on your high horse, you were, telling me how much better you are than me. How can you tell yourself you’re above me, if you kill me not once, but twice? What makes you less of the monster you call me?”

Jessica paused a few feet apart from him, considering him and his words. Even she heard the note of sadness in her own response.

“You made me a lot of things I wasn’t once, Kilgrave. I guess you’re right, you’ve made me more like you than I once thought. But not in the way that you want me to believe.”

She lifted her chin, her tone hardening as steel came into her eyes.

“We’re both killers now. But that doesn’t make us the same. You kill because you enjoy it. I kill to protect. And one thing I’m sure of is everyone on this world and every world in between needs protection from whatever version still exists of you.”

“Jessica, you don’t want this,” Kilgrave told her. She saw sweat beginning to bead his forehead, the pallor of his features as she drew closer, as he saw that there was little space left for him to back away. “You don’t want this- you don’t want this to be who you are. You don’t want to be a killer, not again.”

“No,” she admitted, the word surprisingly soft, even as her features did not shift into a gentler expression. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t do it.”

The gesture she used to end Kilgrave’s life was different, in this dream setting, than it had been out on the dock, in waking consciousness. Rather than snapping his neck, she punched him, putting full strength and impact into the blow directly in the center of his heart. She hit him exactly as she had once hit Reva Connors under his direction, exactly as it seemed fitting and necessary to bring the cycle to a close.

She hit him, barely feeling the impact of the blow through her fist and up the muscles of her arm, and watched with numb detachment as his body jerked at the impact, as he flew backward against the wall and sent cracks spidered through its surface before it caved through, his body spiraling out of sight. But there was no need for Jessica to check it for signs of life. She had seen the glaze of his eyes as intelligent thought left their surface, the stillness that came over his body even as it buckled under her touch. She had felt the jolt of his last heartbeat coming to a halt under her fist.

For the second time in some form of reality, third time, in her mental assumption, Kilgrave was dead at her hands. It was finished, again.

“I kill to protect,” she whispered, her eyes shifting down to her trembling hands, and then her body was spiraling, her thoughts drifting past her conscious awareness.

88

“Jess….are you waking up? Jess?”

Jessica became aware very slowly of a voice, distant but very familiar, calling out to her. Her body twitched, tensing in preparation to strike out; how was it that he had managed to resurrect himself, yet again? But when she heard her name one more time, then felt a cool hand touch her face with unmistakable gentleness and care behind the gesture, she started to relax. Even before she knew herself, she knew and recognized Trish Walker. Only Trish could be so emotionally and physically vulnerable to so much, yet somehow, to Jessica, manage to embody safety.

Opening her eyes, Jessica started to push herself up onto her elbows, squinting as she adjusted to awakening. As the familiar details of Trish’s bedroom came into focus, she took in her best friend’s concerned, anxious expression, leaning in close as she kept her hand lightly against her cheek.

“Jessica? Did you do it? Is it….is it finished?”

When Jessica met her eyes, pressing her lips together, and then gave a short, somewhat jerky nod, Trish exhaled, relief blossoming over her face. She smiled, pride outshining the simple happiness of the expression, and then reached to grab Jessica’s hand, squeezing it tightly.

“I knew you could, Jess.”

Jessica couldn’t quite bring herself to smile; although she had been sleeping only moments ago, she felt exhausted, her entire body limp with lack of energy, perhaps emotionally as well as physically. When Trish leaned in still closer, wrapping her arms around Jessica in an embrace and splaying her hand wide over the back of Jessica’s head, Jessica let herself sink into the hug, for once not automatically stiffening at such close overt affection.

“I’m proud of you,” she whispered near Jessica’s ear, resting her chin against Jessica’s shoulder. “So proud of you, Jessica. I love you.”

Even now, worn down as she was against the usual strength of her emotional walls, Jessica could not bring herself to repeat the words back. But she slowly lifted one arm to encircle Trish’s shoulders, and with her index finger, she slowly, deliberately tapped the other woman’s shoulder four times, a responding, echoing beat of her words. 

I love you too.

There was no way to know what the future would bring, and Jessica had no optimism for it. There was always another scumbag in the world, ready to use, abuse, and damage. There would always be something to struggle against, whether externally or within her own mind and soul, and just because she was past one obstacle did not mean she wouldn’t endlessly relive it and lose out against it within her mind. 

But it was still one obstacle down, and she was still here, breathing, alive, and with at least one person beside her, never wavering in her belief and her pride. And maybe that was enough, for some days.

It was, at least, enough for today. 

End


End file.
